The Deathbox Service

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The Deathbox Service is an after-death box service to palliative care patients to extend their presence up to 4 years

Special thanks to my thesis tutor Donn Koh, respective palliative counselors, nurses, caregivers, cancer survivors who aided me in this project

Friends and family members who have had the lost of a loved one, this is for you

A year long thesis project by Stephen, 2020

Find out more about this project here: Research Book on Behance

The Website |

This service enables willing patients to curate and leave behind five “last words” or precious “objects” to their loved ones guided by a palliative caregiver. Framing the item in a precious gilded frame, this box will be packaged and delivered yearly upon a patient's passing, extending their presence beyond death.

The Deathbox Service |

This service is recommended to patients with lower death anxiety by their palliative caregiver. This empathetic service hopes to lower the barriers to talk about a patient's impending death and simplifies the need to come up with ad hoc activities for patients to express their last wish in 4 simple steps.

The patient will will have 3 choices of box; either last words, object, or mix and match

Last words |

Simply type in your last 5 messages on our website and we will do the rest for you. There will be a limit of 700-730 characters for the main message, not inclusive of the title and salutations

Precious objects |

Simply select an item that is limited to 2.5, 8, 10 cm in width, breadth and length respectively with a weight limit of 1kg. With the help of your palliative counselor, deliver this object to us

Mix & Match |

Can't decide between 'last words' or 'object'? Fret not, you can create your own mix & match customisation on a year to year selection basis

Background |

In funerals, we tend to leave our impression in photo frames, eulogies and urns. In wills, our monetary assets. We are able to plan for our own personal eulogy or to create our own will but I felt that there should be something more than this.

First hand Research |

I asked 59 people what they would want to leave behind to their loved ones and conducted 11 deep-dive interview sessions with initial tryouts of what I might personally want to leave behind to my loved ones. I then went to personally hand-craft and created tryouts of different fidelity for what my loved ones might leave behind as well to varying levels of success.

Context |

Finding the best context for this idea - in end of life care; or palliative care, most attempts do not have a proper structure to achieve this. In fact, palliative counselors often create impromptu art sessions for their patients to say their last goodbyes, but with varying levels of success.

So I thought... What if I could come up with a simple palliative service that is able to curate a gift to extend a patient’s influence beyond death?

Further Research |

The Kübler-Ross Grief Cycle

Explorations of Product |

Multiple iterations and tryout variations of book forms were made, tested and further improved before coming up with a suitable main frame to display the precious item inside. Book form studies, how the book is being held in your hand, stacked and placed in a home setting were considered.